Select Committee on Education and Skills Written Evidence


Memorandum submitted by The British Psychological Society

THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

  This is now a three cycle system (roughly equivalent to Bachelors, Masters and Doctorates), based on a credit system (ECTS) of 60 credits a year where a credit is 25-30 hours of student work. The cycles would be done in sequence:
First cycle: 180-240 credits (There is also a Short cycle at this level of 120 credits).
Second cycle:Normally 90-120 credits, minimum 60 credits.
Third cycle:Unspecified, but suggested three to four years.


  Recording of results would be by distribution, with cut-offs as follows: A 10%, B 25%, C 30%, D 25%, E 10%, plus two levels of failure FX and F.

  There would also be a "diploma supplement" giving more information on what the student had done.

COMMENTS

  1.  There are no substantial, potential, discipline-specific problems with conforming to these proposals apart from 4 below.

  2.  The traditional UK system within which psychology is taught at the HE level would fit reasonably well, albeit right at the bottom end of the suggested time spans. The Masters degree followed by PhD pattern is already being imposed by the research councils, though there is quite widespread resistance to it.

  3.  How easily HEIs would find changing to the ECTS system would depend on which of the varied credit systems (if any) they were currently using but, given several years' notice, it would be possible to manage the change.

  4.  The one potential incompatibility is the taught doctorate which is now the standard training route for clinical and educational psychologists. This fulfils most of the outcomes specified for the second and third cycles, but would not achieve sufficient credits for completion of the third cycle.

  5.  Foundation degrees would be "Short cycle". However, there are few of these in psychology and none which are accredited by the Society. The recent decision to allow these to be validated by FE institutions may in any case take them outside the Bologna Process.

  6.  The abandonment of the UK classification system in favour of a GPA-like system, together with the addition of something like a diploma supplement, would be in line with general thinking in the UK HE sector. However, the replacement proposed by Bologna is rather different from the current HEFCE suggestions because it seems to abandon the idea of uniform standards across all HE institutions in favour of percentiles.

December 2006





 
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